In today’s culture, there is always an abundance of news stories about the “War on Christmas.” In mentary this week, I address that concern and the lack of understanding of the deeper meaning of Christmas. Here’s a highlight: Every December cultural warriors mourn the incessant attacks on Christmas and secularism’s rise in society. News headlines carry stories of modern day Herods banning nativity scenes, religious performances, and even the word “Christmas.” Just as a majority of young people profess they...

Anti-sharia legislation being proposed by the Michigan state legislature is being opposed by what may seem like an unlikely group: Catholics. The Michigan Catholic Conference, citing a potential impact on Catholic canon law, is speaking out against a bill in the Michigan House of Representatives that would prohibit the application of foreign law in Michigan. The legislation, House Bill 4769, is primarily aimed at prohibiting Muslim Sharia law in the state, but Michigan Catholic Conference President and CEO Paul Long...

What is a Right to Work law? Right to Work laws are state laws that guarantee a person cannot pelled to join or pay dues to a labor union as a condition of employment. Why are Right to Work laws considered a matter of economic freedom? Economic freedom exists when people have the liberty to produce, trade, and consume legitimate goods and services that are acquired without the use of force, fraud, or theft. Mandatory unionism violates a person’s economic...

It’s no secret that certain parts of the world have been losing population for some time. The tightly-controlled Chinese birthrate is the first thing es to most minds regarding this topic. However, large parts of Asia, Europe and now even the United States are beginning to see clear danger signs when es to economies and low birth rates. Taiwan’s birthrate is “dropping like a stone…” says an editorial in the Taipei Times. The majority of people realize there is a...

My friend John Teevan of Grace College sends out a newsletter every month called “Economic Prospect.” This month’s edition included this valuable insight: Here is a short passage from Ezekiel 28:4-5 that speaks to us about overconfidence in producing wealth: By your wisdom and understanding you have gained wealth for yourself and amassed gold and silver in your treasuries. By your great skill in trading you have increased your wealth, and because of your wealth your heart has grown proud....

This past Friday, I had the opportunity to present a paper at the Sophia Institute annual conference at Union Theological Seminary. This year’s topic was “Marriage, Family, and Love in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition.” My paper was titled, “What Makes a Society?” and focused, in the context of marriage and the family, on developing an Orthodox Christian answer to that question. The Roman Catholic and neo-Calvinist answers, subsidiarity and sphere sovereignty, respectively (though not mutually exclusive), receive frequent attention on...

Video: UAW President Bob King thanks Planned Parenthood, environmentalists, clergy, et al., at anti Right-To-Work Protest looks at the — at first blush as least — strange alliance between the United Auto Workers union and Planned Parenthood on the Michigan Right to Work issue. Elise Hilton of the Acton Institute, interviewed by LifeSiteNews reporter Kirsten Andersen, says that the UAW, Planned Parenthood and other like minded groups are afraid that right-to-work laws will help defund the progressive agenda. “I don’t...

If you haven’t joined us for this lecture series yet, there’s still time! The final live session for the Globalization, Poverty, and Development AU Online series, Fair Trade vs. Free Trade, has been postponed. This means that you now have a few extra days to catch up on the lectures that we’ve already held before joining us next week for Victor Claar’s lecture on Tuesday, December 18, 2012. Also, if you’re interested in learning more about topics related to development,...

One of the strongest arguments against Right to Work legislation is that such laws exasperates the “free rider” problem. In the context of unions, a free rider is an employee who pays no union dues or agency shop fees, but nonetheless receives the same benefits of union representation as dues-payers. While this concern should not override an employee’s right of free association, it was a concern that, I had always thought was worth taking seriously. But yesterday I discovered that...

In France, more than half ofthe population benefits directly or indirectly from welfare payments. Not surprisingly, the result has been that that the poverty rate for the past twenty years has remained unchanged. “Despite its good intentions,” saysSylvain Charat, “welfareship has created a ‘poverty trap.’” Let’s take an unemployed mother living alone with two children between six and 10 years old. In 2010, there were 284,445 French families in this situation that were on welfare. This mother will be given...